A Wicked Gentleman (24 page)

Or yours Nell.
She didn't think Livia had picked up on the strange tension that swirled in any room that contained Nell and Harry Bonham. And she didn't think Liv saw as much into Nell's distraction as she did. But she'd keep her own counsel for the present.

“Maybe,” Cornelia said, because it seemed a response was required. She wasn't sure how long she could keep this secret from her friends. It wasn't that she was afraid they would not keep her confidence, or even that they would disapprove of this crazy liaison, but she was afraid that if she made it public, put it into words, then it would become a reality that she would have to deal with. As it was, she could pretend it was taking place in some other universe, to someone who was not her flesh-and--blood self. And if she could keep it on that dreamlike level, then it threatened nothing.

But she knew that what had happened between herself and Harry Bonham, and what was going to happen again tonight, most definitely involved her own flesh-and-blood self. The very core of her self.

And she was drifting again, and Ellie was talking to her, and she had to bring herself back.

Somehow she managed to get through the rest of the evening without losing herself again, and when she parted with Liv and Ellie at her bedroom door, she didn't think either of them looked at her strangely.

The fire in her bedchamber was lit, the coverlet on the bed turned back. She set her carrying candle on the bedside table and took a taper to the fire to light the candles on the table beside the chair and the two on the mantel. Then she undressed in front of the fire, carefully hanging her clothes in the armoire, each movement very deliberate. She dropped her nightgown over her head and fastened the tiny buttons at the neck. She wrapped herself in a thick robe, then went to the window.

She gazed out into the darkness, making out the twisted shapes of the apple trees and the outline of the garden wall. A quarter moon was revealed every now and again between scudding clouds. She raised the window and took a breath of the chill air. It smelled like rain. Hastily, she lowered the window to just an inch above the sill. But even so a sharp needle of cold air entered the chamber. The cat, who'd been asleep before the fire, made a mew of protest.

“Forgive me, Puss, but tonight you have to find somewhere else to sleep,” she said, bending to pick up the cat. She put her outside the door, closed it, and turned the lock. She heard her scratch at the door in a fast and furious rhythm that if Cornelia hadn't known her she would have interpreted as desperation. She ignored it and finally the cat sloped off in search of another warm spot. The dogs were with Livia.

All Cornelia had to do now was await her Casanova.

She was drifting in a strange dreamlike state in the fireside chair when she heard the first scraping sound beyond the window. She remained in her chair, eyes half-closed, watching the black space of the window. Watching as a hand slid between window and sill and pushed up the window far enough to let him in. Her heart was beating fast against her ribs, and yet she felt oddly paralyzed, only her eyes moving as she watched him edge over the sill and enter the chamber.

Harry closed the window before slowly turning back to her. He was dressed all in black, as he had been on that other night visitation, his black coat buttoned to his throat, a black muffler twisted around his neck. Even his gloves were black. Only his eyes offered color, a deep emerald green as they gazed upon her, seeming to encompass her very self, to take her into himself, to become a part of him despite the distance that lay between them as he stood by the window, and she sat in her chair by the fire.

He smiled suddenly, and the moment of paralysis that had seemed to hold them both dissipated. He stepped quickly across the rug towards her. He put his hands on the arms of the chair where she sat and bent over to kiss her mouth. Her head fell back against the seat back, and the tip of her tongue touched his. She reached up both hands to take his face between her palms. His cheeks were cold against her palms, but his mouth on hers was warm and moist and pliable.

At last he straightened, raising his head slowly, reluctantly. Her lips burned from the demanding pressure of that kiss, and she touched them with a fingertip, looking up at him as he stood above her. They had said nothing to each other since he'd come through the window, and the silence seemed right. This conversation was one of pure bodily sensation, nothing of the mind, of reason, of rationality in it.

He reached down and took her hands, drawing her to her feet. He ran his hands through the heavy buttery mass of her hair as it clustered around her face and over her shoulders. And he kissed her eyelids, a flickering dart of his tongue that made her smile.

She untwisted the muffler from around his neck, casting it aside, then began to unbutton his coat, her fingers deft. Harry stood still and let her work, while his own hands played in her hair, twisting the loose curls around his fingers.

He moved his shoulders in a helpful shrug as she pushed off his snugly fitting coat. It fell to the floor, and he let it lie. Cornelia turned her attention to his shirt, the buttons flying open now as her breath speeded. She pushed the shirt away from his body and ran her hands over his chest, teasing the small hard nipples with a fingertip. She bent her head and licked his nipples and chuckled softly as they hardened in response. She hadn't realized that a man's nipples could be as sensitive as a woman's.

Her tongue moved across his chest, and her fingers worked at the buttons of his britches, her hands roughly pushing the loosened trousers over his hips. A fingernail caught his skin but neither of them noticed the thin red scratch. She dropped to her knees as her tongue painted a moist path down his belly, lingering on the deep indentation of his navel. Her hands gripped his buttocks as she stroked her tongue along the thick, rigid shaft of his penis springing up from its nest of dark curls. She licked the salt from its tip, and her hand slid around between his thighs, cupping his balls, a finger sliding wickedly, knowingly, upwards into the cleft of his buttocks.

His sharp intake of breath made her smile even through the mist of lust that engulfed her. She had never played with a man's body before, would never have believed that she would know how to bring this depth of pleasure to them both, but she knew, her body knew. It was a deep, atavistic knowledge.

Harry played with her hair, gazing intently down at the bent head, as she brought him closer and closer to climax. When he was on the edge, but still in control, he lifted her head, looked down into her eyes that were like drowned sapphires, their piercing blue light wavery as if seen through a mist. Her lips were parted, and her tongue darted across them catching the salt taste of him.

“Stand up now,” he whispered, his voice husky and strange to him. He bent and lifted her to her feet. He palmed her face and kissed her mouth, his tongue moving deeply within. He unfastened the girdle of her robe and pushed the thick covering away from her shoulders. He ran his hands down her body, pressing the nightgown to her shape, outlining the curve of her generous breasts, the swell of her hips, the small roundness of her belly. The muslin was thin, and her skin was an ivory shadow beneath, apart from the rose crowns of her nipples.

He moved a hand to the apex of her thighs, cupping the soft mound of her sex beneath the muslin, feeling her heat, the rough tangle of pubic hair enticing beneath his fingers. There was something intensely erotic about touching her in this way over her nightgown that concealed even as it revealed. He explored her body's intimacies, but he explored them through a veil.

And still only those three little words had been spoken. The only sounds were the hiss of the fire, their soft sibilant breath as they stood, touching each other, their eyes fused as they looked within the other for the questions, the physical responses that would answer those questions.

Finally, the intensity broke as it had to. Cornelia took a small step backwards, unbuttoning her nightgown, her eyes, however, never leaving Harry's. She dragged the garment over her head and tossed it aside.

Harry ran his eyes in a lingering caress down the body bared to his gaze. He smiled, and said, “There you stand, sweetheart, glorious in your nakedness, and I'm hobbled by the britches around my ankles.”

Cornelia laughed, a deep, sensual laugh of delight at the absurdity of it all, and the delicious promise of it all. “Come to me.” She held out her arms, then fell with wonderful dramatic effect onto the bed behind her, her body sprawled in wanton invitation, her eyes filled with sensual mischief as she watched him kick off his boots and britches.

He put one knee on the bed beside her and stroked down her body once more, this time loving the feel of her skin against his fingers. He stroked as if he was sculpting her, and his eyes followed his fingers as if he would commit every inch of her to memory.

And Cornelia lay still for this exploration of eyes and hands, her arms flung wide, her legs parted, her breasts flattened across her rib cage. When he brought his other knee to the bed and swung astride her, she watched him with narrowed eyes, running her own palms across his concave belly, the hard points of his hipbones. He slid a hand between her thighs, unerringly found all the essential parts of her, and her hips arced on a wave of sensation.

As the wave receded, she looked up into his smiling eyes, and said, “I wanted to give you that, but you stopped me.”

“Ah, sweetheart, Mother Nature gives her gifts with a prejudice,” he murmured, chuckling. “Women are blessed with the ability to manage the peaks many times in succession. The poor male of the species, alas, has but one chance at glory before he's spent.”

Cornelia's smothered laughter brought tears to her eyes. He looked and sounded so comically dismayed, and it was so absolutely at odds with the man she knew. The suave, elegant, controlled aristocrat.

But as she'd always known, there was a lot more to Harry Bonham than that.

The fleeting thought was gone before it was barely formed. He was leaning over her now, his eyes no longer laughing but filled with an urgency of passion that rekindled her own. He ran his hands beneath her thighs, then lifted her legs onto his shoulders. He held her bottom on the shelf of his palms and drove deep into her raised body. So deep she felt him become a part of her, no longer an invading presence but an essential part of her core.

She lifted her hips high off the bed trying to take him farther into herself, her inner muscles tightening around him, possessing him, making him hers. He withdrew from her body an instant before the end, as he had done before, and she felt a second of loss that was engulfed in her own orgasmic convulsion. And when it was over and her legs fell from his shoulders and he dropped heavily onto her, she clasped him tightly, their sweat mingling, their loins no longer joined but pulsing in unison, and for a moment there was only the exhausted sweaty exultation of utter fulfillment.

Then, as always, came reality. Cornelia moved first, her hand lightly brushing Harry's back, and with instant courtesy, he rolled to the bed beside her. He laid a hand on her belly, his breathing heavy.

She laid her own hand over his, feeling the rise and fall of her belly. The fire was low and the candles were guttering. In the half dark nothing seemed as it had been. These dreamlike midnight trysts were insane. She was insane to risk everything for a few brilliant incandescent moments of sensual heaven.

“What is it?” Harry spoke in his ordinary voice, sliding his hand out from beneath hers. He sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, twisting to look at her. “What is it, Nell?”

“Nothing,” she said, aware of how inadequate that was. She struggled to sit up, pulling the pillows behind her. “Just one of those odd moments of uncertainty. You know how it is.” Her light laugh wouldn't have convinced an earthworm.

“What uncertainty?” He regarded her gravely. “One minute you're transported, and the next you're rigid with some doubt, unhappiness…I don't know. Tell me.”

It was not a demand Cornelia knew how to deal with. In her experience men didn't feel these undercurrents, they were the rivers that only other women understood. Men, if they sensed trouble, could be easily put off with a laugh, an affectionate murmur, a mild reference to domestic issues. Not Harry Bonham, apparently.

“I can't do this,” she said.

Harry stood up. He leaned over her for a second, lifted her slightly to release the coverlet beneath her, and deftly inserted her between mattress and cover. “You'll get cold,” he said prosaically.

“So will you.” It seemed the only adequate response. Cornelia drew the coverlet up to her chin as she hitched herself higher on the pillows. She wanted to turn back the cover and invite him into the warmth, to feel his skin against hers, but it couldn't be done.

Harry pulled on his britches, then bent to throw more coal on the fire. He straightened and turned to her, his back to the fire. “So, why not, Nell?”

The quiet question hung in the air for a long time, it seemed. Cornelia closed her eyes, trying to find the right words. Harry didn't move from his position in front of the fire. He stood, his hands loosely at his sides, his green gaze intent upon her face.

“It's hard to explain,” she said finally.

“But you must try,” he returned in the same quiet voice as before.